NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has been used to take the first visible-light photograph of a planet orbiting a star outside of our Solar System. The photograph shows the planet known as Fomalhaut b orbiting the star Fomalhaut in the Piscis Australis (known as the ‘Southern Fish’), some 25 light-years away. Fomalhaut b is seen as a mere point of light in the photograph within an immense debris disk (similar to the Kuiper Belt at the edge of our Solar System) which measures some 21.5 billion miles across.
Fomalhaut b is estimated to be about three times the mass of Jupiter and is about 10.7 billion miles from Fomalhaut. It is thought that the planet would take some 872 years to orbit the star.
See images of Fomalhaut b at:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/39/image/
Information courtesy of Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and NASA. For more information visit Hubble Site and/or the NASA Press Release.
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